the ability to stay
by hanate
Summary: danny's sick so chin takes care of him. chin/danny pre-slash.


After he knocks three little tok-tok-tok noises against a wooden surface, the first sentence that filters through the other end of the door is: "No solicitors!" The next noise that follows is a cough that sounds like Danny's lungs are going to shoot out of his throat, and Chin shakes his head as he calls out in return. "It's Chin," he says. And with a grumbled reply on the other end, Chin immediately assumes it's permission to enter, his hand turning the knob as he shuts the door softly behind him.

Even when he's bedridden (couch-ridden? He's really got to get a new apartment) and looking like absolute shit, Danny still finds a way to be Danny.

"If you brought me pity cake, I'm literally going to puke it all over your shirt."

Chin's lips twitch into a smile, even if the other man can't see it with his eyes shut the way they are, but he decides to spare him some. "You alright?"

"I'm a million dollars," Danny mumbles, and then like an afterthought, he pulls the worn blanket over his head and adds, "Zimbabwean dollars."

The admission has Chin deciding to set the small pot of soup down on the coffee table before him, and though part of him wonders whether he should pull the blanket back down and take Danny's temperature, another part decides that it would be best to give him the soup and leave. His fingers twitch, but his hand doesn't move forward, edging between a need to touch and a need to remain Danny's friend. "If you ever decide to open your eyes," Chin begins, edges of a smile bleeding into the syllables as Danny makes an unintelligible noise in response, "I brought you vegetable soup. An old family recipe. Kono wanted you to try it."

Belatedly, Danny questions, "Does it have illegal moonshine in it?"

Chin can't help the chuckle, but he shakes his head. "Not this one."

Danny grunts out a 'thanks', and Chin takes that as his cue to leave.

The door creaks open when he pulls it, but Danny's voice travels in the air and wraps around Chin's ankles like a prison chain.

"'s rude to leave soup for sick people and not pour 'em any."

So Chin closes the door. And he stays.

* * *

Spending the afternoon with a sick Danny is a lot like spending the afternoon with a pillow that likes to complain about how sore it is. At some point Chin manages to coax him into a seated position, and around little mutters of 'I'm not three years old' and 'you sure this is legal?' and 'wow, warm mug', Danny finally gets to gulp the soup down. His hair is disheveled, forehead dotted with sweat, and his eyes are blurry as he blinks them and lowers the rim of the mug from his lips. Chin makes sure Danny drinks all of it before taking it back and putting it in the sink.

It's when Chin's taking Danny's temperature, the thermometer between the other man's lips, that he hears a soft 'you don't have to stay', muffled around the shape of the stick in his mouth.

So Chin says 'one hundred and two'. And he stays.

* * *

Danny spends most of the time asleep, breaths slipping in and out of him like the soft crests of an ocean meant for swim and not surf. Chin wakes him up every so often to give him medicine, water, and soup. They have a system because Chin is good with systems, but he feels he's better at fixing computers than he is at fixing fever-ridden detectives.

It's a quiet existence as Chin washes up the dishes left in the sink, does the laundry, and explicitly keeps himself from touching a pile of crayon-infested papers in front of a corkboard that's comprised entirely of drawings from Grace. But the silence is worth it, he thinks, whenever Danny looks up at him sleepily and is devoid, for the shortest of moments, of all the worries that seem to bounce in his head and heart and most likely in his hair. In the silence, Chin realizes that Danny's eyes are a brilliant blue even when they're tired. And that they're even more so when they light up with recognition that Chin stayed.

He stays the entire night, drifting between the planes of sleep and awake as he sits in a chair by the couch. Danny remains asleep every time his eyes open again, except for five forty-two in the morning, when he wakes up to find a pair of eyes already looking at him.

Danny's smile combats the soft purple-orange hue of sunrise, and the pleasure that bleeds into it is enough to stain Chin permanently. "Hi," he murmurs, sleepily. "I should've puked on that shirt when I had the chance."

So Chin smiles back. And he stays, just a little while longer.


End file.
